


Away

by BellaTrixster



Series: Gone Trilogy [2]
Category: Gone Trilogy
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-08
Updated: 2015-11-08
Packaged: 2018-04-30 14:13:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5166818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BellaTrixster/pseuds/BellaTrixster





	Away

Jesse decided almost immediately that the medical help from the base had only gotten worse since his last visit six years ago. They kept him in a small room with way too many machines for his liking, which didn’t help him sleep at night. But, he appreciated the fact that he no longer felt like he was dying. It was a nice feeling.

After a long week and a half of intense care, he was finally starting to feel like himself again to some extent. When he’d first been admitted into the infirmary he’d tried to ask for Will. He wasn’t sure how many times he’d asked for his brother before someone finally told him that he was dead. That certainly didn’t improve his condition. He blamed himself for Will’s death. If he hadn’t run away, his brother would be alive. Having Ashlin and her friend, Danny, around helped him a little. At least then, he had someone to talk to.

The day had started off pleasant enough. There hadn’t been any rude doctors or nurses constantly badgering him to eat disgusting food or take his antibiotics. No, none of that had been a problem since Ashlin had almost literally forced his medicine down his throat along with his breakfast. Danny had only sat aside watching in amusement. Jesse wondered how good of a friend he would make.

“So, when are you going to learn to punch a hole through Danny?” Ashlin inquired where she was leaning against the wall on the side of his bed while Danny defensively hugged his stomach with a scowl sitting in the chair on the other side of Jesse’s bed.

“The day I no longer have to worry about artificial food flavoring,” Jesse murmured, his ocean blue eyes closed for a moment, waiting for Ashlin to scoff at the notion. But the scoff never again.

“The day is today then!” she said cheerfully as she pushed herself off of the wall.

Jesse’s eyes snapped open and stared at her in dismay. “No… What?”

Ashlin smiled mischievously at him. “I _can_ grow stuff, you know. I learned how to garden, _remember_?” she inquired with raised eyebrows as she ran a hand through her blonde hair carelessly.

Jesse frowned at that, because, no, he didn’t remember that. “Nope, not a memory of it. Bet it was Brandon,” he teased with a pleasant smile though he was still trying to figure out if she’d ever told him.

She laughed while Danny screwed his face up, probably trying to imagine Brandon teaching Ashlin how to garden. That, of course, was very hard to do since Brandon had never seemed to be the best teacher to Jesse. “I bet he taught her the same way he taught me to aim and fire a pistol,” Danny decided, eyebrows still furrowed as he continued to think about it.

Ashlin nodded in agreement enthusiastically. “Definitely.” She fell silent for a short moment, which bothered Jesse. Silence from Ashlin meant she was thinking, and right now, he could do without her thinking for a while. “But really, you don’t have anywhere to go. Why not bunk up with Danny and learn a bit?”

“So long as I don’t have to share my bed,” Danny said shaking in silent laughter. Jesse imagined that Danny was a naturally decent person, but some of his ideas were questionable. “I can even help teach—”

“—how to shoot someone unintentionally?” Ashlin suggested with a bright grin, though her golden eyes wavered in uncertainty the moment the words were past her lips.

Danny scowled at that, looking rightfully hurt. “I _never_ shot anyone,” he muttered, his green eyes darkening. There was something that Jesse was missing, something that neither Ashlin nor Danny explained further. “I meant that I could teach him hand-to-hand combat. I don’t do guns,” he grumbled with his arms crossed in front of his chest.

“What if he doesn’t want to?” Jesse said, speaking up with his eyebrows raised. While it was a decent offer, he wanted nothing to do with the base after his treatment was done. He didn’t want to deal with Brandon. The general wasn’t one of his favorite people, especially now since he was acting more paranoid than normal.

“Where will you go then?” Ashlin countered, losing the grin as she looked back at him with her piercing golden eyes. Damn, they were unsettling. “The farm’s probably burnt down. John has lost his ever loving mind—”

“Isn’t it in Asia?” Danny inquired absentmindedly as he looked at Ashlin, his green eyes clouded over in memory.

“Don’t ask,” Ashlin told Jesse with a sigh. He was watching the both of them with a look of amusement though he wasn’t feeling too amused.

Jesse sucked in a breath as he tried to resist a yawn. “Didn’t plan on it. And John’s not the only one who’s lost his mind. Brandon’s about lost it too,” he pointed out. Brandon had already lost it. There was no doubt about it. He just controlled his emotions and himself altogether better than his uncle. He knew how to keep people from questioning him, though Jesse was sure plenty of people still questioned him.

“Nothing’s changed there,” Ashlin snorted as she rolled her eyes.

“What about that thing that I suggested?” Danny inquired quietly as he looked toward Ashlin for permission.

“What thing?”

Ashlin’s shoulders drooped noticeably. Whatever the ‘thing’ was, she didn’t seem to like it.

But that’s all Danny needed for permission to continue it seemed. “We go to John while you pretend you’re her boyfriend. We stay there and take him down from the inside if we can,” Danny said, sounding somewhat enthusiastic about the idea. The idea sounded too watered down for Jesse. He was sure that there was more to it, but Danny just wasn’t telling more, possibly due to Ashlin.

“ _Or_ ,” Ashlin started with a smirk tugging at the corner of her lips, “you two can be boyfriends,” she suggested with a shrug of her shoulders, barely managing to hold in her laughter once she noticed the looks she received. Both Danny and Jesse were staring at her in horror. “Okay, fine. It’s a bad idea,” decided Ashlin with a teasing smile.

“A _very_ bad idea,” Danny agreed, losing the horrified expression as he looked toward Jesse. “Does that sound like a plan to you?”

“A pretty bad one,” Jesse said with a nod, earning him a death stare from Danny. He knew the look all too well. “But it’s a plan nonetheless.”

“At least _someone_ agrees,” Danny said triumphantly as he stuck his tongue out at Ashlin, his arms folded across his chest again.

Ashlin snorted at that, yellow eyes gleaming. “Yeah, because I’m the only one on this base that seems to have common sense.”

 

Danny was happy to see Jesse finally recovering. The older boy had nearly been on his deathbed when he and Ashlin had found him in the desert-y landscape that surrounded the base. Now he was able to talk, laugh and eat without a problem. The doctors and nurses still refused to allow him to walk, which Danny—for once—understood, but he also understood how frustrating it must have been for Jesse.

Ashlin seemed happier than she had been. He imagined after seeing a close friend near death recovering would make almost anyone happy. Jesse was friendly enough. But it was hard to decide when all he’d done since he’d been taken to the infirmary was lay around and chat when he was able to. Ever since they’d brought him back, Brandon had seemed extra paranoid. Danny was sure that Brandon assumed Jesse was another spy, but everyone on the base knew that he couldn’t touch Danny without the wrath of Ashlin falling on him. He wasn’t willing to risk that.

Danny wanted to bring up his idea of getting on John’s good side to Brandon. But a paranoid general who already pretty much hated Danny’s guts would never agree to something like that. _Especially_ when it meant endangering his daughter. It wasn’t like Danny hadn’t told her no. They had been discussing the idea for almost two weeks now and she still wouldn’t budge. If Danny and Jesse went, she went. Danny had only agreed on the terms of Ashlin keeping Jesse and him in check.

“Sir,” Danny started as the door clicked shut behind him.

Brandon looked up from his desk, only his dark brown eyes moving wearily. “Yes?”

Danny took a deep breath, not really wanting to bring up the idea to the general, but he knew he would have to at some point. “Ashlin and I had an idea…” If Brandon didn’t like the sound of that, then he was going to absolutely _love_ the actual plan, “Er… We wanted to go to John to figure out what he’s up to and try to break him down from the inside… I just wanted you to know—”

“When?” Brandon sounded mildly irritated by the idea already.

Danny was stunned that he hadn’t outright said no. He opened his mouth to speak but no words came out at first. “Um. Well, we don’t know yet. We were hoping to bring Jesse with us.” Brandon raised an eyebrow. “John wouldn’t hurt him, would he?”

The general looked as if he was going to strangle Danny from the opposite side of the desk. “Yes,” he managed finally. “And then there’s Ashlin, who is my _daughter_ and John knows it. And you. John had Hunter before, so he’ll _obviously_ recognize you on the spot.”

Danny scowled as he ran a hand through his hair in thought. “Yeah, but think of what we could do,” he said, trying to play down his desperation. “John could believe Jesse. He doesn’t _know_ me. And Ashlin can be convincing.” _She’s convincing enough to make me believe she hates you_ , he wanted to say, but didn’t want to risk being thrown out of his office.

Brandon stared at him murderously with a look of bewilderment, as if he couldn’t actually believe that Danny had come up with that mental of a plan. “No. You could all be killed. Ashlin is my only family. The Murrays’ deserve a chance with someone honorable. And you…” Brandon forced a cold smile, making Danny shiver inwardly, “Well, you deserve a chance.”

Danny rolled his eyes at that. He doubted that the general actually meant it. “What about Ashlin’s promotion?” he questioned, changing the subject. He knew he was getting nowhere with it, and the general wouldn’t agree with him. He wasn’t sure why he’d even though he ever would agree with him.

The general’s dark brown eyes darkened even further if that was possible, his face morphing into something more than murderous. Danny thought Brandon was preparing to launch himself across the room. “Keep to your own matters. She’ll be promoted when I say so.”

“She’s been training since she was _seven_ ,” Danny objected, his hand balled into a fist at his side. “She should be promoted.” She _should_ have been promoted with him. It wasn’t fair that he’d been promoted and she’d been left behind. But that wasn’t how Brandon worked. He worked to irritate, not to please.

Brandon growled under his breath. “Listen, _Daniel_. It is not your place to tell me what to do. You are a second lieutenant. I am a general. Do you see the difference?” he inquired in a deadly calm and quiet voice, making Danny cringe.

Danny pretended not to hear him. “She should be promoted,” he continued through gritted teeth. “She can fight better than me. She can fire and aim a gun ten times better than me. And she knows when to listen. She hasn’t done anything wrong. She’s done _more_ than enough to earn that promotion and she’s been through more than most of these other idiots. Stop babying her and give her the promotion.” It wasn’t a lie. Ashlin had been through so much more than most of the recruits on the base. She’d lost her mother at twelve, almost lost the ability to walk, shipped off to be a slave, and lost a close friend. Danny wasn’t sure if he would’ve been able to deal with everything she’d gone through.

He imagined that Brandon was about ready to throw Danny out the window. But he didn’t care. Ashlin had been heartbroken when Danny had been promoted and she hadn’t. And he had felt bad for her as well. It wasn’t fair. “You can’t keep her like this forever,” Danny warned before he whirled around and headed toward the door.

 

Ashlin loved the training room.

 _Usually_.

But not at the times when it was filled with snappy, wannabe recruits. While most of them were older than her, none of them had been training as long as she had. For God’s sake, they’d barely even trained more than two weeks. They annoyed her more than Brandon did.

Today was one of those days. The training room was bustling with annoying and overly snappy recruits. And almost every single one of them was doing something completely improperly. She supposed she could practice in her own room, or in the arena, but it wasn’t the same. The arena was cold and empty, and her room was too crowded to start punching and kicking.

Danny waltzed into the training room with the same sort of annoyance spread across his face, but she could tell that he was looking for someone. Her, probably. He always seemed to be looking for her these days.

When he finally spotted her, he straightened up and wave a hand with a somewhat friendly—still mildly irritated—smile as he walked toward her. “I talked to Mister A—” Ashlin cleared her throat and glared at him with her unsettling golden gaze. While  she didn’t get along with Brandon very well, she didn’t appreciate the name-calling from anyone. Danny knew that. “What? I was going to say attitude,” he said with a look of puzzlement as he shook his head. Ashlin scoffed at that, there was no way he was going to say attitude and they both knew it. “Anyway, I talked to him. He’s still keen on keeping you a recruit forever. He played his whole ‘High and Mighty’ card on me. ‘I’m a general. I don’t have to listen to you. Blah, blah, blah.’. You know what? I’m going to punch him someday,” Danny muttered rolling his green eyes. “And he won’t let us go to John.”

“I _told_ you that he wouldn’t,” Ashlin sighed as she continued to watch the recruits mess up out of the corner of her eye. “And that’s because I’m his little girl. God _forbid_ that I do something that could endanger me,” she muttered. “As if we’re not in the middle of a war.”

Danny shrugged his shoulders. “We could go anyway.”

“And be murdered by Brandon if we aren’t by John. That sounds like a lot of fun to me,” Ashlin grumbled stifling a sigh. “What about Jesse?” she inquired. He was the main part of the plan. Ashlin wasn’t so sure that she wanted to walk into John’s presence without Jesse there. They needed someone who knew John, even if only a little, so they wouldn’t have TNT thrown in their faces.

“Jesse…” he stared with a quick upward glance. “We should wait for him to recover. I don’t want to take any chances of him being hurt more than he already is,” Danny said watching the recruits in bored amusement. “These recruits suck,” he noted as he shook his head.

Ashlin smiled at that as she turned gaze toward the group of recruits that Danny was watching. “Ah, but they’re better than you,” she teased poking his arm lightly.

He snorted. “Pft. I was a very good recruit,” he huffed running a hand over the spot she’d poked him.

“You were,” she agreed with a nod. There was no doubt about that in her mind. “Much better than these idiots.”

“I hate to say it, but I think Will might have made a better recruit than these failures,” Danny laughed.

The name was like reopening a wound, but she nodded and laughed anyway. She wasn’t sure if Danny knew how much it hurt when he said the name, but she assumed he did when he let the topic go. It was true. Will wasn’t cut out to be a recruit, but at least he had the decency to be respectful and ask for help if he needed. “I’m with you on that,” she said as she looked back at Danny. “Do you even know where John is?” she questioned after a moment of thought. How would they even get to John if they didn’t know where he was to begin with?

Danny looked at her with an eyebrow raised, humor gleaming in his forest green eyes. “Why, yes, of course. I happen to be a spy for him,” he teased before rolling his eyes. “No,” he said sticking his tongue out at her. “I’m sure he’s around.”

“Around can mean a lot of things…” Ashlin said trailing off.

“Around Phoenix, I mean,” Danny said correcting himself. “He’ll be near.”

 

New Orleans looked beautiful in pictures. Old pictures. It didn’t look so beautiful now. Five too many hurricanes, a hundred too many riots and other disasters had taken its toll on the Cajun-Creole city. The once beautiful French seaport no longer held its former beauty, only memories of what it once had been.

John had never seen New Orleans how it had been before all the destruction. He imagined that it had been beautiful, with many French, Cajun, and Creole relics as reminders of the past. But he wasn’t in Louisiana for heritage for heritage reasons. No. John was here to find people and move back and forth between New Orleans and Phoenix as quickly as he could. Pennsylvania was too far away to make quick transfers, whereas Louisiana was close enough to Arizona to move quickly enough for his liking.

Since they’d gotten to the city they’d done the tests on the bones his men had found outside of Phoenix. They results hadn’t been what John was expecting.

William Murray.

His nephew’s bones had been in Phoenix. He didn’t want to believe it. He’d been the one who had ordered the fire to be started. He was the reason that Will was dead. If Jesse was alive at this point—which he strongly doubted—he was the only family he had left. William Murray, the boy who had been the closest to him, was dead because he hadn’t realized where he was. That was three times worth of mistakes now.

Now, he was busily checking his workers to try to make his mind off Will. Most of his men were still clearing out the city and checking to make sure there were no remaining threats. John kept a handful of people around him; Matthew Haven, Nichole Rivera and Sullivan Baker. Baker was decently intelligent, but dumb enough to keep working for him, which he wasn’t planning to complain about. Matthew was a loyal boy, though he went out of his way to annoy anyone he could. Nichole was almost inseparable from Matthew, and hard to sway. She didn’t completely support John, but since Matthew did…she stuck around. She reminded him a lot of Brandon’s daughter.

That’s who filled his already crowded office space. Baker paced the room while Matthew and Nichole sat on the sofa, Matthew drumming his fingers against the arm of the seat. John tried to block that out, but didn’t manage it very well.

“So, um… Boss. Are we supposed to be doing something?” Baker inquired quietly as he looked toward John, sounding worried.

“My captives in Philly need to be moved here,” John said absently as he filed through several papers. “But I don’t suppose you want to do that.” He sounded irritated, when he really wasn’t. He was too busy paying attention to his papers to notice his tone.

Baker swallowed nervously as he came to a halt in front of John’s desk. “No… I thought Ryan and Smith were driving back to have them taken care of…” He trailed off.

John nodded as he ran a hand through his sandy-blonde hair thoughtfully. “Ah, yes. I forgot about that.”

Baker mumbled something under his breath as he turned away from the desk. “What about that kid?” he asked, speaking up again.

John looked up from his papers with a raised eyebrow. “Hunter? Or Jesse?” Between the two of them there had been enough talk, but he never knew which kid they were talking about.

“Uhm. I thought you said Jesse was dead, Boss—”

He sighed and shook his head. “I said he might be. Hunter is dead. No doubt Brandon thought he was one of my spies.” He rolled his stormy grey eyes. “I’m not that stupid.” John set the papers down in a neat stack. “What about him?”

Baker started pacing again, looking slightly agitated and upset. “Shouldn’t we be looking for him? Luke said he left his house. But we never got confirmation that he got to the base… He could be out there—”

“Why do you assume that I even want Jesse here?”

Baker froze in place, surprise and fear masking his face, his eyes huge saucers as he stared back at John, obviously caught off guard. “I—Uh…”

“Because he’s your family,” Matthew said dryly, picking up where Baker left off, his hazel eyes locked on him. John felt a strong urge to throw something at Matthew. Loyal or not, he definitely knew how to get to people. Between the sarcastic remarks and the constant switching of English and Italian, it was more than enough to drive someone insane. “Most people like to have family close. Especially when their family is small.”

“He’s been roaming the Arizona desert for _months_. If he’s even alive, his life is on the line. We’ll be too late by the time we get out there,” John said bitterly, though he hated having to put up that barrier. The last thing he wanted was for Jesse to be dead. “If I’m the last Murray, then so be it. I didn’t choose to roam the desert and die.”


End file.
